A hosting system architecture may have various constraints on how virtual machines within the hosting system can be linked together in a network. For instance, some technologies impose a limit on the number of machines that can communicate over a single virtual network, or the number of virtual networks possible on a single physical network. VLAN technology, for example, can only have 4,094 different virtual networks on a single network. With the growing prevalence of data center usage, this is too small a number on its own. As a result, various technologies have appeared to augment or replace the standard VLAN tagging within a multi-tenant hosting system.
Furthermore, the technologies in some hosting systems may restrict the number of machines that can communicate with each other over one virtual network. For example, a data center might be divided into numerous separate “pods”, each separately managed. However, with larger and larger networks required, a tenant may need a network that covers multiple pods. Without coordination between the pods, setting up a virtual network with machines in both pods will be difficult.